


A Song of the Sea

by Becky_Blue_Eyes



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Magic, Dornish Water Magic, Elia Fests, Elia Martell Fanworks Week, F/M, Gen, High Fantasy, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Elia Martell, Rhoynish Water Magic, Selkies, Tragedy, inspired by song of the sea
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:56:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26763955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Becky_Blue_Eyes/pseuds/Becky_Blue_Eyes
Summary: “Between in, between out,between North, between South;between the winds, between the waves,between time, between space…from the shell, a song of the seaneither quiet nor calm, searching fiercely…”Sometimes, when the sun is high and the seas are white with foam, children of the Mother Rhoyne are born quite special. Elia Martell is one of those fortunate few, to her great misfortune.A high fantasy AU inspired by Song of the Sea. Written for Elia Martell Week 2020.Part I: EliaLyrics of “Song of the Sea” copyright by Bruno Coulais and Kíla from the Song of the Sea soundtrack.
Relationships: Elia Martell/Gerion Lannister, Elia Martell/Rhaegar Targaryen
Comments: 31
Kudos: 48
Collections: Elia Martell Fanworks Week, Southern Renaissance (Dorne Renaissance)





	1. Prologue: A Fairy Tale Like Many Others

Once upon a time, for as long as the sun has risen east to settle west and as long as the moon has held dominion over her tides, there was the Mother Rhoyne.

She stretched from one end of Essos to the other and had made children. Like all good Mothers, She loved Her children. Her wild daughter Noyne and Her darkling daughter Qhoyne, Her smiling daughter Lhorulu and Her shy daughter Selhoru, and Her son the Old Man of the River. And to show Her love for Her other children, the Rhoynar who sailed up and down Her banks and filled Her streams with music and spice—for them, She gifted them aspects of their elder siblings.

Some would take after Noyne and be brave warriors who feared no other man, who looked their enemies in one eye and spat in the other. Their eyes would glitter black like their obsidian spears and their hearts would blaze like the red sun at dawn.

Some would take after Qhoyne and bend the river around them with water magic, shaping and reshaping their Mother to protect their families. Their skin would be patterned black and white like the moon over the midnight tides and the night would become them.

Some would take after Lhorulu and have a thousand songs in their heart, become singers and storytellers to keep the legends of the Rhoyne alive. Their voices would carry over any crowd or mountain and their steps would be forever light.

Some would take after Selhoru and see the future and far-flung friends in their dreams, so that they may see fortune and fate coming their way. Their hair would form perfect ringlets streaked with indigo and their minds would be clear from deceit.

And some would take after the Old Man of the River, who was able to cross the boundary beneath the water and above—they would be selkies. Be born with a ring of azure around their irises and a shimmering cloak of seasilk; to take a human’s shape on land and a sea creature’s shape in the water. Mostly turtles, sometimes crabs to spite the dread Crab King, even seals and sharks and serpents. They had a language of their own crafted by Selhoru, and songs taught to them by Lhorulu alongside a song-shell made by Qhoyne. And most of all, they were a blessing, as all their siblings were, but with a price: if their seasilk cloak were ever stolen from them, they were trapped in their human skin. If their cloak was destroyed, they would wither and die, and curse those who had taken their freedom, just as Noyne taught them.

The Mother loved all Her children equally and carried them all in Her heart. For thousands of years they all lived together in the Rhoyne, the rivers and the Rhoynar and the Old Men of the River. Palaces of love and beauty in pink and green marble reached their crystal spires towards the sun, and no night passed without songs from above and beneath the waves.

Then the dragons came.

History will recall that a group of Valyrians killed an Old Man of the River which started the Rhoynar Wars. But in truth, it was a selkie matron they killed, and they stole her daughters’ cloaks so that they would be made most beautiful unwilling wives. It was an affront to everything the Mother stood for, and Her children fought. Sometimes they would win, sometimes they would compromise, but at the end of centuries of bloodshed, the Valyrians and their dragons were more ferocious than even the Noyne. More ferocious, more vicious, more eager to break the conventions of war to send Rhoynar into their burning mines of Valyria and force them to dig deep into the ground and boil alive in their own sweat and blood.

And they were smart. They learned what separated a water witch from a dreamseer, a warrior from a bard, a selkie from a human. They committed their raging genocide with fire and blood, and no matter how hard the Mother wept, they would never stop. They were conquerors and conquest never cared much for those being conquered. In the end, Garin the Great, the son of a selkie and a water witch who had the qualities of both, was suspended over the Rhoyne and forced to watch his fellow Rhoynar—his family—be slaughtered to the very last. They stripped his cloak from him and burned it. His hair turned white and his body withered before their laughing eyes.

Then Garin threw his head back, with the moon and the sun and the Mother in his eyes, and cursed them all to sorrow as he and his people have known. The Sorrows came from the heart of the Rhoyne near Braavos and swept down the Rhoyne, the Noyne, the Qhoyne, the Lhorulu, the Selhoru. Waves taller than the mighty Forests of Qohor raged down towards the sea in wild fury and despair. And all of the Valyrian armies, all of their settlements, even the great Black walls of Volantis with its bridge spanning the mouth of the Rhoyne…it was but sticks and stones before the dying curse of every selkie, dreamseer, water witch and Rhoynar slaughtered in the war. When dawn rose cold and clear through the heaving mists, not a single remnant of Volantis and her terrible glory were left. The only lucky survivors in the Summer Sea were slaves clinging to bits of driftwood.

Nymeria of Ny Sar, who was a dreamseer as her grandfather before her, saw this happen from hundreds of miles away from the battle. She gathered all who remained of the Rhoynar away from the Rhoyne onto the sodden fields of Andalos and cast her dream to the future. There she saw many paths. If they were to head south to Sothoryos, they would suffer from disease and slavers. If they were to head north to the Thousand Islands, they would suffer death from the monsters beneath the sea. If they were to head east beyond the Jade Gates, the selkies would do just fine in the Jade Sea but the Rhoynar would lose their songs and language and sense of self forever.

So instead she gathered ten thousand ships and they sailed west, to Dorne.

Over 100,000 survivors made it to what is now known as Sunspear. But while Maron Martell let the Rhoynar into his lands with great hospitality, war was not finished with them yet. It took decades of fighting and politicking until Nymeria’s War—Nymeria’s _Conquest_ , perhaps—was finished and they were allowed to live in peace. But the damage that this constant fighting in Essos and Westeros took its fatal toll on the Rhoynar’s spirit. Slowly, surely, their magic began to die. Water witches could only manipulate little waves rather than the entire course of rivers. Dreamseers could no longer see the future with clarity. As their native language shifted from Old Rhoynish to New Rhoynish to Dornish and their songs were changed along the way, their singers lost their great power. Warriors clung to their spears and forgot how to use their shamshir scimitars and longbows. Worst of all, selkies were simply not born as much as before, as many of them left for the Jade Seas during the migration and took their magic with them.

Centuries later, even dragons died, and the world lost its wonder. Truth became legend, legend became myth, and myth became fairy tales for abuelitas to whisper to her giggling grandchildren.

But not all hope is lost. As surely as the sun rises east to settle in the west and as the moon holds dominion over her tides, Mother Rhoyne loves Her children. And every now and then, a child is born with indigo in their hair, or a sun in their heart, or feet that never make a sound, or hands that push at the tides, or even a ring of blue around their eyes. Magic is still with us.

And one day with the sun high in the blazing Dornish sky and the sea white with foam off the beaches of Sunspear, a tiny princess is born with a ring of azure around her black eyes, and a shimmering seasilk cloak around her little shoulders.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that’s the set up to my AU! Already off to a wild start, considering how I just wiped Volantis off the map.
> 
> As explained in the fairy tale, Elia Martell is born a selkie. Selkies are shapeshifters who take the form of humans on land and the form of sea creatures (traditionally seals) in water with their selkie coat. If their coat is stolen, they cannot change back into a sea creature and are trapped on land; if their coat is destroyed, they are doomed to die. And in this story, a dying selkie may curse those who have caused their death; when compounded with the deaths of other selkies and water witches and their countrymen, the curse can be powerful enough to destroy an entire city.
> 
> (Let’s be real tho, no one misses Volantis anyway lmao)
> 
> This story will be split into parts, and the first one is from Elia’s POV. It will maybe be around 4 chapters long, depending on if I get carried away. The next part will be from Arianne’s POV!


	2. The Little Girl from the Sea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the wait! I had three papers, two midterms and a group project all due this past week alongside daily essays and it’s been an awful mess!

From the moment she arrives in the world with a rasping wail and the master’s hands curl around her tiny body, there is never a moment where Elia is alone. Mother holds her at her breast first with her arms and then with a sling, so that Elia is always pressed to her warm skin and knows that warmth like a second heartbeat. Father holds Elia’s little hand as she toddles around Sunspear, first with stuttering little steps and then bursts of running that end with her falling into Father’s arms squealing with laughter. Oberyn follows her a year later, her constant companion through the winding sandstone halls where the walls glitter with sunstones and shells arranged in geometric zellij mosaics. Doran writes her long letters that paint a world of lemon groves and whistling red mountains and steely eyed nomads that keep her awake at night imagining adventure.

And there is the sea.

Oberyn hears the sea when he holds a shell to his ear, but not like how Elia does. To her, the rushing roar of a thousand waves pushing and pulling, pushing and pulling—there is a secret language under the foam. That language sings to her, calls her. Elia hears it from her balcony in Sunspear, from the winding dusty bazaars filled with lemons and smoked lamb, from every shell in every zellij mosaic inlaid in palace walls and smallfolk shanties. She hears it in her dream, and Mother watches with nervous fear in her black eyes.

For the first years of her life, Mother doesn’t let her go deeper than her knees into the beckoning sea, nor into the cajoling Torrentine when they visit Mother’s friend the Lady of Starfall. There Elia must simmer and pout with the waves lapping at the hem of her skirt and her mantilla shawl flapping in the sea breeze, while Oberyn and her friends Ashara and Arthur Dayne splash in the water. What Elia would give to join them, to swim past the rocks to where she hears mermaids singing and trade them her seashell peineta comb for a coral hairpin! What she would give to be in the water—she doesn’t have the words to explain her need other than to cry to Mother, “Please!”

No matter how much the sea calls to her, no matter how much Elia whines and pulls on Mother’s hands, they hold her tight against the language only Elia hears. It does not help that Father falls sick from a terrible pneumonia that sweeps the Shadow City and Sunspear. The Shadow City has as many people as Lannisport, and every night the air rends with the haunting wails of new widows and orphans. Mother quarantines the entire city and the docks, commissions all of the silent sisters and those who have survived the plague to run soup kitchens and tend to the poor—she does all a just ruler must, but it is not enough to save her own family. Elia falls sick along with the others and Mother weeps over her soon-to-be death bed while Elia clings to life. She cannot hear much with her ears stoppered up with sickness and sadness, but she imagines she can hear Father humming to her in Old Rhoynish with her head on his lap. He smiles at her and says, “Habibti, it is time for me to go see our Mother. Will you be alright here?”

“Don’t leave Papa,” she says. She clings to him with all her little girl strength but she is so terribly weak and ill. “Who will sing us songs and scare away the monsters? Mama will be so sad.”

“I’m sorry, little one. But you, and Doran, and Oberyn, and your Mama—you will be alright. You will sing songs, and you will scare the monsters away, and you will make your Mama smile.” He kisses her forehead and sleepiness overwhelms her like waves washing over her head. All shall be well, she imagines, all shall be alright. “Don’t be afraid, I will be watching you from beyond the seas. And one day we shall meet again.” When she awakens the next day her fever is broken, and perhaps is Mother’s resolution against the sea.

Because Mother, for all the firm strength that Princess Loreza of Dorne must embody to keep her princedom safe—for all that, her mother has a soft heart when it comes to her children, when it comes to seeing Elia’s sadness and Doran’s long letters asking for permission and all of their quiet misery at Father’s quiet funeral. It finally takes Oberyn pleading with Mother, pleading that Elia is meant for the water and that he’ll always watch her like Father told him to—then, Mother locks herself in her bedroom for the whole night with hot mint tea, rosewater shisha, and Father’s portrait. The next day Mother takes Elia back to the shoreline and lets go of her hand.

There Elia adjusts her shimmering seasilk cloak, the transparent cloak she has always worn and always will wear, and slips into the water.

The art of changing from one kind of little girl to another is an art that paints itself along her skin, her hair, her bones, the blue-black irises in her eyes. Elia selkie-self is a sea turtle, like so many before her, and the sun is warm on her back when she drifts along the edge of the sea so she may peer down at all the fish swirling beneath her. When the mood strikes her, she surges down, and she is far faster than the other sea turtles, she propels through the water as if she is a wave all her own and flying at the crest of it. Oberyn can hardly keep up with her and she delights in dredging up conch shells and pearls from the seabed to spit at him and make him squawk. Elia is seven when Mother lets her first enter the sea and it is a joy she doesn’t have the words to explain when she returns to the white sand beach. How do you describe the euphoria of flight to someone without wings? How do you describe the thrill of underwater riptides to someone without fins? But she can describe how she is happy, so wonderfully happy, and how she has friends beneath the sea.

She makes friends with the crafty eels slithering through the pale pink coral, she makes friends with the hazy jellyfish floating in their undersea forests, she makes friends with the manatees who toss her into the air, she makes friends with all the sea turtles who drift alongside her feeling the sun on their shells. All of the water is her friend it seems, from the littlest hermit crab to the great leviathans that swim deep off the shores of Sunspear.

And when she is eight, she makes friends with a lady from under the sea. Elia first meets her when Elia is a turtle and the lady is a barracuda. The fish scatter away from them in fear, and Elia knows that she ought to return to the surface and Oberyn as well, since she is just a little girl with no sharp teeth of her own. But she feels something different about the other. Something achingly familiar like greeting Doran after a long stay away from home. The barracuda spirals around her and twists Elia about until she laughs despite herself.

Then the lady slips her cloak down to her wait and ties a knot there. With a shimmer she becomes a sort of mermaid with a respondent barracuda tail and scales shimmering up to her collarbones. But not a true mermaid; Elia has seen mermaids sunbathing in the delta of the Torrentine where they strum lyres that lure ships to their doom in the tall chalky rocks. They have purple veins in their skin; they do not have cloaks. The lady beckons for Elia to follow, and Elia does, right through the mouth of a cave far beneath the surface of the sea. The cave glitters with gems in impossible colors, it curls and coils so much that Elia wonders if they will swim right through the core of the earth. Only the faint glimmer of the not-mermaid’s tail beckons her onward. They finally resurface and they sit on a coral atoll with Sunspear shimmering in a mirage across the sea. Is it Sunspear? Or maybe it’s the long-lost Volantis which was swept into the sea by Garin the Great. Elia stares at the hazy colors to see if she can recognize them. She eventually gives up and focuses on the sea around them, glimmering dark blue and purple against the bright pink of the coral. It’s like a dream, a lovely dream, and Elia loves this place.

There the lady smiles and rests her hand on Elia’s cheek. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen another one like me, another selkie.” Her voice sounds like the sea, like the language Elia has known in her heart since she was born but yet still doesn’t understand. “I am so happy to meet you, my child.”

Elia splashes her hand into a puddle on the coral’s surface. The water is iridescent like a butterfly’s wing—has it always been that color? “Mama says that all the selkies went away a thousand years ago to go back to the Mother Rhoyne.” Mother had a terribly sad voice when she told her that story, while the sea broke over the white sand beach beneath Sunspear and the stars hung like paper lanterns in the nighttime sky. Sad, and afraid, and lonely; Elia felt lonely then too. Maybe in a way she has always felt lonely to be the only one with blue-black eyes and a seasilk cloak. So she smiles and clings to the lady’s hand. “But she was wrong! You’re a selkie too!”

“Your mother is right in one thing, there are not many selkies left in these waters. They went somewhere beyond the Mother, all the way to the Jade Sea.”

Elia gasps. “But that’s on the other side of the world!”

The lady laughs. She has a lovely laugh, to match her lovely face. Elia has never seen a person with skin like a seashell before, or hair like Sargasso seaweed, and never eyes like her own. “My child, the world is far larger than the stories say. You could swim for a thousand years and never see all of the seas.” Elia giggles into her hands and the lady cups her hands in the sea foam colleting at their feet. “Have you learned the Song of the Sea yet?”

“Mama and Papa and Beryn taught me some songs, my lady. But what’s that?”

“It’s the song that all selkies must know, the selkies that live here in the Summer Sea all the way to the Jade Sea and beyond. My mother taught me it a very long time ago, and so I shall teach you.”

The sea foam glows, before it becomes a large seashell. But it is patterned like a turtle’s shell, glints like a mother of pearl, and there are holes along the surface perfect fit for fingertips. The lady holds the shell to her lips and blows. The sound is deep, the sound of evening in the Shadow City where the ships roll in the docks and the shisha smoke rises in fragrant wisps above the hooded bazaars and souks. Elia shivers, feeling something inside of her unfurl into life. Then she gasps in excitement, because the shell is playing on its own; the lady smiles at her. “Listen closely, little one, and let the Song into your heart.” Then she sings.

_“Idir ann is idir as,” Between in, between out,_

_“idir thuaidh is idir theas;” between North, between South;_

_“idir gaoth is idir tonn,” between the winds, between the waves,_

_“idir am is idir áit…” between time, between space…_

_“As an sliogán,” From the shell,_

_“amhrán na farraige;” a song of the sea;_

_“suaimhneach ná ciúin,” neither quiet nor calm,_

_“ag cuardú go damanta…” searching fiercely for…_

_My love. “Mo ghrá,”_ Elia whispers the last, and the scales fall from her eyes and ears to reveal what the world truly is.

Elia returns after what feels like no time at all but is in truth a full night and day. When she returns, Mother is beside herself with fury and terror. She alternates between shaking Elia and screaming at her never to disappear like that again and holding her close enough for Elia to feel her warmth as a second heartbeat. “I thought you had drowned! I thought you had died and were far begone my reach!”

Elia kisses Mother’s cheek. “I’ll never leave you, Mama. Bronagh was teaching me about the sea.”

_Bronagh_ is the lady’s selkie name. For selkies have two names, one for on land in the Mother’s tongue and one for under the sea in the tongue that Selhoru made for her little siblings. Bronagh will teach Elia their language and their magic, and everything lost to history. She even gave Elia a selkie name to match Mother’s name for her: _Áine_ , Ainya. Elia has a name, and a selkie shell in her dress pocket beneath her cloak, and sea foam crystals in her hair. Elia turns back to the sea where Bronagh stands in the swelling tides. Bronagh curtsies to Mother with her homespun kaftan sodden and heavy from the sea. She smiles with her barracuda teeth.

Oberyn says that Bronagh is a sea witch, come to take Elia as her apprentice. Doran says that she is an Orphan of the Greenblood, like their bisabuelo long ago. Mother says that she is perhaps a dangerous woman, but that they must trust her all the same. They all say many things. Bronagh just laughs with her thin white lips and pulls Elia deeper into the sea. “Come away, o human child,” she sings in the language only they understand, “to the waters and the wild.” And the waters are so clear to Elia’s eyes now, and so filled with color and wonder—were it not for her family on land, she would stay beneath the sea always.

* * *

Elia grows older, and stronger, by spending half her days on land and in the sea. The maesters watch her with approving eyes, as Elia has never been the healthiest or the strongest, and already had a brush with death from the pneumonia plague. But with Bronagh swimming with her through caves burrowed deep in the Broken Arm of Dorne, with Oberyn riding horses alongside her and Doran through the Water Gardens, with Mother teaching her all the traditional dances of their people—how can Elia not grow up to be a happy child with all the world’s air in her lungs?

“It is common for selkies to be born delicate,” Bronagh explains to her. Elia floats on her stomach so that the sun makes fractals against her turtle shell, and Bronagh circles slow and steady around her. “I remember being sick often when I was your age, and other selkies I’ve known are the same way. Think nothing of it, _a leanbh_ —as long as you return to the sea, you will never be sick on land.”

“Not even the sniffles? And where are the other selkies you met? Can we visit them? Are they turtles and barracudas too? Or sharks? Have you ever been to the Rhoyne? And not even a fever?”

Elia giggles when Bronagh makes a whirlpool around her. “So many questions, Ainya! I wouldn’t know, I am just a selkie not a hedge witch or a wise woman. Maybe you should learn to become one someday and I’ll get to ask you questions.”

Bronagh is joking of course, as she is surely one of the wisest women in the whole world. But Elia learns all she can. She learns Old Rhoynish, New Rhoynish, the selkie’s tongue and the whistling of the waves. The difference between a Rhoynish oud and a Dornish guitar, of which citrus trees grow best in which soil, of how to make delicate sandsilk on Ashara’s loom so that she too can have a cloak all her own. She eats hummus and pita fragrant with garlic and olive oil, grape leaves stuffed with goat cheese and dragon peppers, paella filled with saffron and scallops she caught with her own hands. She drinks Dornish sours, strongwine, lemonsweet, mint tea hot and cold, horchata foaming with Summer Islander cinnamon and vanilla. Elia laughs, Elia sings, Elia dances, Elia dreams; in all these things, Elia is the most perfect girl in Dorne.

“Ay, mija,” Mother clucks her tongue when Elia is a coltish girl of thirteen and growing out of her wardrobe. Ashara is her lady companion and is as terrible as her with keeping decorum, the both of them like wild sand steeds running through the halls of Sunspear and the pools of the Water Gardens. Mother licks her thumb and brushes away the salt crushing on Elia’s cheekbone, before adjusting Elia’s selkie cloak so that it drapes around her shoulders like a shawl. “I turn my back for one moment, and you’ve traded your fine gowns for a fishwife’s skirt and blouse. Shall I tell Bronagh to find you a husband from the sailors at the docks?”

“If you do, can you find one from Braavos? Or Sarnath? Or Essaria?” Elia spins around and catches the midday sun on her shawl. Indeed, with her plain linen blouse tucked into her bright red poblana skirt and dust clinging to her sandals, she looks as if she’s off to the bazaar to haggle for fish and flirt with the merchants. Elia smiles and kisses Mother’s cheek. “Doran is sailing to all the Free Cities—the proper ones, not the slaver ones—so maybe he’ll find me a husband there. Or maybe in Far Mossovy. I heard they wear caps of fur there and ride bears like sand steeds!” Mother grumbles that Elia would love to be lady to some forsaken sailor a thousand miles away. Elia hugs her. “I only jest, Mama. I couldn’t leave you and Beryn and everyone else.”

How could she? Dorne is her home, the seas of Dorne are her birthright. Princess she may be, and Doran’s heir until he has a family of his own, but she doubts she will ever wish to leave. What else could Westeros offer her that she doesn’t have here? Bland food? Murky waters? Constricting long stays and bodices? Chains hidden in a wedding vow? In all the rest of the kingdoms, the Lords Paramount have lost their crowns. Here in Dorne, even the smallfolk wear their peinetas encrusted with shells and jewels, and no dragon shall ever turn their mantillas into mourning shrouds.

Mother smiles and kisses her forehead. “For the sake of your poor husband you ought to stay close. Otherwise Oberyn will surely try and poison him.”

Oberyn snorts from where he lounges beneath a lemon tree with Ashara. He is Elia’s perpetual shadow on land and already apprenticed to an apothecary so that he may learn the ways of medicines and poisons. Were he a selkie, Elia would bet he would be an octopus with beautiful golden tentacles and poisonous ink, squeezing and sliding through every crack in someone’s argument. Instead he is her hermanito who has a well-earned fear of sandals and wooden spoons, and a smile brighter than the Dornish sun. “I would never do such a thing,” he defends himself. “I wouldn’t have the chance before you and Doran disappear him somewhere in the Red Mountains. And Shara must have her vengeance too.”

Mother rolls her eyes and Elia giggles. Ashara Then Mother gives Elia a basket and a purse full of coins, tiny pink shells, and perfect blood oranges. “Elita, Beryn, Ashara. I will be speaking with Lords Yronwood and Gargalen this morning, and leaders of the Orphans in the afternoon, so you’re on your own until dinner. I expect change back!”

Oberyn links his arm with Elia’s and Ashara’s, and they head through Sunspear’s airy halls down into the bustling Shadow City. Vendors know them by name, as they are their good Princess’s precious children and the Lady of Starfall’s heiress. They call out to them in greeting and Oberyn dares to flirt with the prettier ladies gathered by fountains. They sit in the shade beside those bubbling fountains and eat roasted garlic-cumin lamb in a tangine with plums, eggs and almonds; flaky polvorones and honey-glazed pestiños; and giant glasses of hot mint tea and iced mango hibiscus tea. They watch people go by, haggling and gossiping and serenading. Elia buys three kaftans of miraculously soft linen, a takchita made of golden sandsilk so fine she can see through the outer layer of the gown to its gauzy underskirts, and bolts of fabric for a chiapaneca gown to wear when Doran returns from the Free Cities. Ashara has the best eye for jewels and picks out oil-slick pearls and speckled sunstones for them to wear at their ears and throats. At some point an oud is passed around by a little abuelito who runs a fruit stall, and Elia plays so that Oberyn can dance with his pretty ladies and so Ashara can sing with her lovely high voice. The sunlight glints off the zellij mosaics of abstract trees and flowers, like a sainted garden from the seven heavens here in their dusty Shadow City.

No, Elia could never leave Dorne and its shores.

Later that day the three run into the waves laughing and shouting at each other who can find the prettiest shell to bring home to Mother. Bronagh rises with the sea foam and scares Oberyn to within an inch of his life when she appears behind him silently and flashes her barracuda teeth. Elia laughs herself sick and hopes one day she will be able to master the water like her mentor does. That one day she’ll swim all the way to the Jade Sea where the other selkies are, and return to Dorne with new stories and gifts for her friends and family, and perhaps a husband too.

But until then, she has this bit of sea, and this bit of beach, and this bit of perfect happiness. And that’s all she needs.

* * *

**Zellij, a mosaic pattern common in the Middle East, especially Morocco:**

****

**Mantilla and peineta, an Andalusian Spanish lace shawl and comb:**

****

**China poblana, a Mexican dress from the Puebla state:**

****

**Takchita, a Moroccan two-layer gown similar to a kaftan:**

****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song title is the English translation of “La petite fille de la mer”, an instrumental song from Vangelis. It’s very dreamy and lovely, and I recommend reading the chapter to it!
> 
> This was all about Elia’s childhood and early adolescence, and her discovering her selkie powers. Not too much plot happened here, since I was more in the mood to write an aesthetic for this chapter than plot-heavy elements. But next chapter is her going through Westeros in search of a husband…who knows who she will find at a certain rock by the sea…
> 
> The language of the selkies is Irish Gaeilge, and when Elia (her selkie name Áine means “radiance” like the sun and is pronounced like Ainya) and Bronagh (her name means “sorrow” like the sorrows the Rhoynar have experienced) speak in italics that’s what they’re speaking. For example, “a leanbh” means “my child”. I chose Irish because this story was inspired by the Irish movie Song of the Sea, which I highly recommend, and I find Irish to be an incredibly beautiful language that is unfortunately endangered. 
> 
> In comparison, Old Rhoynish is Arabic, which is why there are zellij (geometric tilework extensively used in Morocco) and shisha (hookah) as well as kaftans and takchitas. Habibti is a term of endearment for girls, and habibi for boys. A lot of the food described in this chapter are Moroccan and Middle Eastern which you really ought to try because they’re goooood.
> 
> New Rhoynish is Spanish with Mexican influences, which is why Elia calls her great-grandfather bisabuelo and why Dornish ladies wear traditional Mexican dresses with a mantilla lace shawl and peineta comb. Princess Loreza calls Elia mija (my daughter), as well as Elita (little Elia) as a nickname. Fun fact: guitars were in Spain starting in the 1400s, so it’s totally in character for there to be guitars in my fantasy medieval Moorish Spain.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed it!


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